branching faith

This is another series on hands utilizing different mediums.

The first movement has a base of pastels rubbed into the paper. The image of hands branching towards the heavens was created by using an artist's eraser to remove the pastel coloring. The interesting thing about this, is that when I began this piece, I had been torn between the idea of creating a tree or continuing with hands. I thought that I had settled on a tree, but hands still came through.

With this second movement I added outline in charcoal, fingernails, hand bones, knuckle wrinkles and the beginnings of shading. Lower perimeter "ground" has also been added to anchor the tree.

The final movement works to add dimension to the piece through contour drawing, emphasized outline and heavier shading. The proportion of the second finger has also been addressed. With the image of the hands popping out more distinctly, the tree became more of a whisper. To bring this back out, while maintaining its position as secondary, braches, leaves and fruit were added with a medium/light weight.

body armor

We have been challenged to look deeply into ourselves to discover what we are the most afraid of... 


My greatest fear is that my children could lose their faith. My body amour—my protection against this, is to wrap them in scripture. When they are troubled, scared, in doubt, seeking guidance or feeling in need, I want them to turn to scripture to read God’s words and be comforted in the warmth of His love. To this end, I will be constructing a quilt sewn together from the pages of a bible. 


While I have a bible collection at home, each one is special either being attributed to a milestone in my life, a gift, or an antiquity. I will not use them for this project. Therefore, to find a bible for my project I searched several thrift stores, added one more to my collection and found the bible below.  

To get both of my children involved in the project, my eldest came home from college for a long holiday weekend. Together, the three of us searched for our favorite versus. The next step was the  hardest for me. The idea of cutting apart a bible, destroying it, is very contradictory to me. In the end, my eldest daughter helped me. She cut the pages for both the front and the back of the quilt. 

Two layers of batting are used to emphasize the separation between the time of the prophecy and the time of fulfillment.

Having gotten the front and back pieced together, with the batting nestled between them, I selected crimson wool yarn ties to bring the layers of the Great Story together. Crimson was chosen for the sacrifice that Christ made for each of us. Wool was selected both because Christ is the Lamb and because of the fleeces that we continually put before God.
 

The binding is made from pages from both the Old and the New Testaments to show that while there is separateness, there is also unity. 

Sarah, my youngest, is clothed in white: a symbol of her innocence, an innocence that needs to be protected. Protect the child and the mother is protected.

The pages of a New English Bible have been sewn together with a tight stitch. Each page has been chosen by one of my children. They have highlighted some of their favorite versus. The Old Testament forms the back; the New Testament forms the front showing that the new covenant has replaced the old.

The size: seven pages across and seven pages down was an almost unconscious—conscious choice, meaning that although it was chosen deliberately, it was because it seemed the obvious choice to use a divine number.  

The time that was spent with my children picking out pages and versus to be included in this piece was an incredible time of bonding as we shared scripture that is special to us. Through their continued interest in the project and comments that they have booth made since we worked on it together, I feel that this has been a very successful time spent together in firming their beliefs and confirming in their minds how important Christ is to each of us.

Sewing the pages together was an incredible journey. I am not a seamstress. I sewed pages together the wrong way several times and had to pick the thread back out. The delicacy of the paper made this even more of an issue. Some of the pages were ruined.

hands

I am very interested in doing a series on hands as they express love and supplication to our Lord.

I am very interested in doing a series on hands as they express love and supplication to our Lord. This first drawing is holding Christ close to my heart. The perspective is me looking down at my hands. This was much more challenging than I thought it would be. I found myself feeling almost turned around as I was drawing. For the left hand, I finally turned my sketch pad upside-down.

This first movement pulls me in as I move slightly away from hold Christ to me for my purpose and turning my thoughts to His purpose.

Though this second movement shows progress towards Christ’s purpose, I am not satisfied with the result of the drawing. This is a piece that I will need to re-work to fix proportions and the curvature of my fingers.

faces

This is the starting point of my blog for Reconstructing Self. Posts will be added as the quarter progresses, with each post reflecting something that has to do with my identity and how I see my self.



This is a self portrait doodle done the first few minutes of the first day of class. 

This second self portrait was much more satisfying to work on than the one that I did in class. I really tried to work on proportions of my face. I felt like working in color, so spent quite a bit of time layering pastels to try to obtain a more real look. It turned out much darker color-wise than I had intended. Interestingly, even though I was trying to draw myself, and I do see myself in this, it really looks like my mother. My husband agrees.